Transient Friends


Picture One
Everyone gathered at Matthew and Catherines for the great give away of things they are not taking with them.

Picture Two
My good friends Matthew and Catherine

Picture Three
Eating a last lunch with Matthew and Catherine and the rest of the A.P. crew. We are eating Pak Ban. Pak Ban means a meal consisting of side dishes. We have close to eighty differant dishes on the table to try.






Sokcho Diary

20 September 2006



One thing that really sucks about Korea is the social scene. I do not mean that the people I hang out with are not fun, they are. I have had some great times with the A.P. crew so far, and I hope to have many more. The people I have met here so far have been great. We go out for drinks, go hiking, head out to do our shopping together, we hang out a lot and they are some great people.

What I do mean is that here, in Korea; you are always losing your friends. Every month or two people who you really like leave just when you are getting to know them. It is the nature of the beast that we all live with here.

In Korea all of us waygooks are on one-year contracts. That means that every month someone’s contract comes up, and if they do not re-sign, they leave.

Case in point, Matthew and Catherine, two of my co-teachers at A.P. They were, are, wonderful people that I enjoyed seeing everyday and doing things with. I pretty much spent every weekend on the past month and a half hiking with Matthew and then going out for drinks with he and Catherine, but alas, it was there time to go two weeks ago.

In the next few months I will be saying goodbye to Kelsey and Lloyd, two other people who I have grown fairly fond of since I came here and I am pretty sad about it.

It works both ways too. When my contract is up, I will leave behind people who have just arrived and who have started to hang out with whom, and me possibly, will be a little upset that I am leaving as well.

So what does friendship with other foreigners mean in Korea? Well, in short, you live it up as much as you can. You live one day at a time and have a blast doing it. No one brings up the date that they will be going back to the real world, back to jobs, families, friends, bills, the rat race of Europe or the States. This is the life we have chosen, and while it is a good one, the sacrifices that we make, in terms of friends and relationships, is a profound, deep, sense of loss that we do not share with anyone. We just keep it inside and deal with it alone.
So this beast, this life of teaching overseas that I have chosen for my career, will it always be this way? Will I always have to make new friends and lose others? Probably, but will it make me any less of a social animal? I don’t think so. I make a lot of friends here, some I will keep in touch, others not, but they all add to my being in some way or another.